Happy New Year to all of you. Last year was an interesting one of both growth and decline for our companies. We moved into a new larger office in San Antonio (northside) from our old office (northeast) in October, thanks to team work the transition went extremely well. We were down for just one or two days. Considering all the people involved (contractors, phone installers, IT people, plus my staff), it was an amazing site to see it all come together so smoothly.
In September prior to the move, I affiliated with Key Financial Corp, in Florida. Key Financial Corp is a net branch mortgage banker, licensed in 48 states and does FHA, VA and Conventional loans. I am proud to be Key Branch 118 here in San Antonio. September was probably not the best time to start doing loans, but the versatility offered by Key Financial has helped us to thrive in the midst of the mortgage crisis. Having a good staff locally has also helped. Remember, in bad times, the cycle will eventually go up, but in the mean time you have to market. You have to spend more money on marketing when times are tough. This is not always easy to do when you have less money coming in. It's a tough decision, but what is the alternative?
Residential appraisal work has been slow throughout last year for us. However, we were able to supplement the loss through additional commercial appraisal work. We were selected to be one of ten appraisal companies by the City of San Antonio to do right-of-way work for the $550 million dollar bond issue passed earlier in the year. According to our contact with the city, we should start seeing jobs coming in around February or March. We were also selected for appraisal work by San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA). So far, we have only gotten a few commercial appraisal assignments, but this should pick up considerably in 2008.
Our real estate company is finally starting to catch on here in San Antonio. It was more important for me to get everything set up properly than to just recruit agents without a plan to house and train them. My trainer, Anna Shellner and I wrote a comprehensive training manual for our agents including test questions after each chapter. The training talks about the big picture of real estate and how it all fits together; from raw land to development to closing and property taxes. We also covered each of the forms and explained in plain english.
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